He made it look deceptively easy, Britain’s Alex Dowsett chasing Belgian Victor
Campanaert’s Hour record of 55.089 kilometres, broadcast on BBC iPLAYER.
Smoothly stroking a big gear he gracefully powered around
the high-altitude 250-metre Aguascalientes
Velodrome in Mexico at 54/55kph.
As we know, he completed 218 laps when he was
looking for a shade over 220.
He finished 500 metres short of the mark!
Dowsett had failed – but magnificently so. The clock had stopped him at 54.555km.
This was still 1.618 km further than the 52.937 km he rode in May 2015
when he took the world record from Australia’s Rohan Dennis.
In this latest bid he also finished just short of
the current British record of 54.723 set by Dan Bigham on October 1st
this year in Switzerland – the day after Britain’s Joss Lowden broke the
women’s world hour record.
Attempting cycling’s most coveted and most difficult
record is nothing short of torture, say those who have succeeded and those who
have failed.
Eddy Merckx, the greatest cyclist ever, after his
successful attempt in 1972, said that he had never suffered so much. It had
taken years off his life, he said. He achieved 49.431km.
I recall Chris Boardman’s successful bid at the
Manchester Velodrome in 1999, when he squeezed past Merckx’s figures, adding 10
metres.
When he came to a halt helpers lay the bike, with
rider still attached to the pedals, flat on the trackside so that Boardman’s body
- still in his aerodynamic tuck – could be prised free.
When British multi-time trial champion Michael
Hutchinson gave best 40 minutes into his 2003 attempt he was as white as a
sheet. He looked like a corpse. He’d been forced to call a halt as numbness
crept along his arms and he feared he
might lose control. He had been a couple of minutes off Boardman’s pace.
Lest we get too over dramatic, a few hours later
Hutch was out on the town for a Chinese meal and a beer. Such is an athlete’s
remarkable powers of recuperation.
When Dowsett rolled to a halt, his helpers quickly
moved to steady him until he got his bearings.
Dowsett, who held the record briefly in 2015 with
52.937km - which Bradley Wiggins beat one month later - offers a different
perspective on what it takes.
 |
| Alex Dowsett |
It’s only an hour, not a six hour stage in the final
week of a grand tour, he said.
That might be bravado of course, Dowsett determined
to convince us, perhaps himself, that he would relish the Hour Record’s cruel
embrace.
“Agh, de
Pain”, as a first-category club mate of mine would utter, gleefully weighing up
his prospects for a weekend of suffering in road races. Suffering, that’s the name of the game. The
Hour takes this into a different realm.
Dowsett is a time trial specialist, like Joss Lowden
who broke the women’s Hour record in Switzerland in September, with 48.405
kilometres.
Both have mastered the solitary effort of riding
against the watch, when time is the enemy.
Not that riding on the road – where you go in a
straight line for mile after mile -
can ever be compared to a race to nowhere on the
track, especially lapping every few seconds and trying to remain focused for a
full 60 minutes.
No headwind on the track, that’s a blessing – nor
tailwind either! - no variable surfaces
to bring temporary relief, no changing scenery, no downhill stretches to ease effort
of striving to stay on top of a huge gear.
Relax that pressure in the banking and G-forces will
have you soaring up the track, take you off the pursuiter’s line. The track
requires a different mind-set.
Fascinating how technology was optimised to give Dowsett the best chance.
The new Factor track bike with £950 gold chain ring which it was claimed would save him 25cm per lap… at 60kph. The £2,750 skinsuit. The wheels, the wind tunnel tests, all the fixtures and fittings, all chosen in the quest for speed.
He made the attempt at high altitude, which offers an advantage over sea level. And there is the human himself, a six times British time trial champion, double stage winner in the Giro, key rider in the Israel Start up Nation team.
Having broken the record before he was
quietly optimistic.
Of the many reports, Cyclenews.com’s Daniel
Benson and Simone Giuliani provided the most thorough, describing how Dowsett’s
valient challenge began to “unravel” in those final moments.
On target for the first 20 minutes he then began to
slip second by second off the pace. He
must have known, felt it. Not that we, the viewers could tell. The commentators
followed his every metre, telling how he rallied with 20 minutes left, raised the
stakes to 55kph in a final do or die effort.
He needed to go even faster if he was to regain the
ground lost. It was simply too late. He nevertheless flew on, fighting all the
way, but coming adrift now, shifting his position slightly, his face betraying the
superhuman effort he was making, now
exacting its toll.
The scientists and coaches will put their heads
together to try and figure out the maths, of exactly where and why he lost
it.
But can maths define the unfathomable human factor?
In the end, perhaps body and mind, having to cope with such extreme demands, reached a consensus and said “whoa, that’s your
lot.”
Dowsett
has haemophilia, and in his record attempt he was raising awareness for
the Little Bleeders Foundation and the
Haemophilia Society.
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